Barnaby Joyce’s political future under a cloud – politics live | Australia news

It’s time for Barnaby Joyce to do the right thing by the country, by his party and step down. And, if he is not going to do that, if the National party can’t sort out their own issues, then the prime minister has to act.

This is not an issue about Barnaby Joyce’s private life; frankly, I don’t care about that. It’s about competence from the government, particularly in regional Australia. We’ve got a Regional Growth Fund which was announced as their number one priority in the budget last year – $270m to kick-start growth in regional Australia – well, we were told in October that plans and guidelines would be imminent yet we still have not got any guidelines for this fund.